In recent years, there has been a proliferation of digital cameras, as standalone devices and as parts of more complex devices, such as cellular phones, smart phones, other mobile computing devices, etc. With this proliferation, manufacturers have rapidly increased the technical features of the digital cameras on these devices. For instance, many mobile devices today typically include five megapixel cameras, which are often needed to produce high quality images.
Unfortunately, even though the technical specifications of such cameras have improved, these cameras often cannot capture and produce high quality images because the image processing capabilities of these cameras have not matched their improving hardware capabilities. For instance, many cameras today still do a poor job of capturing and producing images with high dynamic range (HDR).
A classic example of an HDR scene is a person standing indoors in front of a window during daytime. Many cameras capturing such a scene produce an image that has a bright background with a dark foreground that does not show all the features of the person. The problem of capturing such an HDR scene by a mobile device's camera (e.g., by a phone's camera) is exacerbated by the small image sensors employed by such a camera.